Posted on 09/17/2007 11:28:24 AM PDT by 2banana
The money should have been put in escrow. The mortgage company should have not been able to touch it.
BTW - When you go for a mortgage, tell them YOU want to pay the taxes on your house. Some will say OK, some will charge you 1/8 of a point (or some other small fee). DO IT. Besides getting the interest on that money in your own account, YOU know you will pay your own PROPERTY taxes on time. I have known so many people screwed over by non-payment/screw-ups of property taxes by their mortgage company...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
>> The money should have been put in escrow. The mortgage company should have not been able to touch it.
Absolutely. I wonder if criminal charges could be filed against these scoundrels.
Second your advice about paying your own taxes and insurance. I have found that it’s easier to do if you negotiate this point up front when getting the loan — at that time, you have more leverage. (Depending on your financial situation of course.)
“If they don’t, that’s grounds for a lawsuit against both the mortgage company and the government.”
A lot of good that will do... The company went bankrupt. And, try to sue the government. Besides, why should the tax payer have to pay?
Yep....we have American Home and we pay our own taxes. One thing for sure, if American Home doesn’t pay the taxes, even though you pay them those tax dollars, you still owe the taxes on your property. You didn’t make any agreement with the tax collectors and they will come after you. The legal battle you will have will far outlast the time it takes the tax collector to foreclose on your home.
This just SUCKS!
OMG, back when we had a PITI loan,if this had happened, MAD would not even begin to describe .......
Blood from a turnip.
The homeowner is on the hook of the mortgage company doesn’t have the money.
Yup. Looks like the ticker is AHMIQ.PK ; the company now trades on the “pink sheets” instead of a major exchange. $.28 a share apparently.
“Escrow” must mean something different than my Websters, however.
Assuming their home insurance is also rolled into their escrow account, they may well be uninsured along with being delinquent on their taxes.
“The legal battle you will have will far outlast the time it takes the tax collector to foreclose on your home.”
Purely a technical point, but probably not true. In most states, a tax bill must be delinquent for 5 years before the tax collector can foreclose on a homeowner. That is not to say that serious penalties will not accrue and it’s also probably true that those penalties are for all practical purposes inescapable should they be imposed. You might well, for example, be able to show canceled checks to your mort holder supposedly covering taxes and insurance, but even though those checks will almost certainly be for amounts over your P & I with the idea that the excess was supposed to have been paid to your tax collector.....if the tax collector didn’t get his “due”, you’d be penalized.
Why doesn’t the homeowner at this point, STOP paying the mortgage company and use that money to pay the taxman?
Am I missing something?
Because then you will foreclosed upon and evicted. Makes no sense if you have any equity in your house. And yeah, it is not fair. But a homeowner is just a small cog - and when you think about it - no one is really a homeowner. They just "rent" from the state (property taxes).
So if the mortgage company goes belly up, who are you paying the mortgage too?
You write one monthly payment. If the mortgage took the money for taxes from your payments, isn’t that an indication that you are actually sending the money to the mortgage company.
Who are they sending the mortgage payment to now? Is that different than months ago?
Who will foreclose if they are bankrupt?
What am I not getting here.
The homeowner has no control over to whom their mortgage may be sold to. If the mortgage company goes bankrupt, all the lawsuits in the world will not get one’s money back.
I normally don’t like regulations, but the sale of mortgages should be highly regulated. The purchaser should be required to have as strong a balance sheet as the Bank or Lending Company the home owner originally selected for his or her loan.
Most mortgage companies sell their mortgages to free up cash to make new loans. However, they quite often "service" the mortgage for a small fee to the new note holder
Whomever "owns" the mortgage is going to damn well want their money. And they will not care if the people who are servicing the mortgage have not paid the taxes.
If this company is still holding the mortgage, the new owners (ie - after all assets are sold in BK and mortgages are an asset to a mortgage company) are going to damn well want their money and will not care if the taxes were not paid by the BK company.
In CA. mortgage companies are required to keep tax or insurance funds in a separate trust account that is separate from the general funds of the company. They must of commingled the funds, which is illegal.
In a perfect world, if a mortgage holder purchased the mortgage, it also purchased the liabilities of the mortgage included in the mortgage payment (property taxes and insurance), and would be responsible for ensuring the servicing agency (their subcontractor) properly services the mortgage and escrow accounts. They should be responsible for the actions os inactions of their subcontractor.
Class action lawsuit is on the way. Big one, joint and several liability, tec.
Suing bankrupt companies for damages can turn out to be a non-productive use of time.
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